Saturday, March 25, 2017

THE STORY OF MAN

One day the father of Man said to
his son, “I want to write the last chapter of the story of Man. “Is it short,
or long?” asks his son. “Neither too short, nor too long,” answered the father.
“Is it a tragedy, or a comedy?” asks his son. “Decide for yourself,” answered
the father. “Please write it quickly. Maybe I will benefit from it,” said his
son.

Here is the story.

After the greats of all nations,
ancient, medieval and modern, secular and religious, across all civilizations
have come and gone, are we any better? Are we any safer? The answer is a big,
“No.” We kill one another every day. One nuclear power threatens another nuclear power with nuclear
destruction. We live under threat of total or near-total destruction.

Why, oh Lord? Are the protesting
angels right? Are we shedders of blood and causers of destructions? But You
still went on to create us, saying You know better. Are You wrong? It cannot
be, You being All-Knowing. Are we wrong to believe in You? Please help us
humans!Where is our promised helper,
Imam Mahdi? When is the Second Coming? Oh Lord, please help us.

You must help yourselves, says the
Lord. I have given you My Book and the mind. Read My Book and use your mind.

But all our great minds have come and gone. There is the tomb
of books in all the world’s libraries. Still we are no more knowledgeable, nor
more safe. Why? The great bullies remain bullies. The aged, the women and the
children suffer, become refugees. Oh Lord, where is the justice You promised
us? Where is Your compassion?

The fault lies not in your stars, but in yourselves, as said
Mr Shakespeare. You choose the easy road of sports and amusements; not the
difficult road of struggle for justice and truth. You choose to degenerate,
instead of to progress. It is your fault.

But, Lord, it is You Who make us like this. How can I believe
in You now? Even the geniuses among us, like Prof. Stephen Hawking, do not
believe in You.

Did not Jesus, one of your greats, said that you cannot live
by bread alone? You have to believe in something. Better that something be the
Ever-Living, the All-Powerful, the All-knowing, the Perfect, even if He does
not exist. But what if He does exist?

Yes, He does exist. Even if you cannot know Him, he does
exit. Otherwise, how can you exist? You exist because He created you. How do
you know that He created you? As far as I can see, the world creates itself,
although I did not see it happen. I deduce it logically. If I were to say that
Someone Else creates the Universe, it
makes logical sense. But in the end you will come to the Uncaused Cause. What
causes the uncaused cause? If you answer the uncaused cause, causes itself, you
put yourselfoutside the bounds of
logic. You become illogical, which is unacceptable.

You have to surpass the boundaries of logic, not into the
world of the illogical, but into the world of supra-logical. God is not
illogical. He is supra-logical.

Epistemology is the combination of
sensory, logical and supra-logical evidences. Period.

About Me

(About Kassim Ahmad
By: M. Bakri Musa)
Kassim Ahmad is Malaysia's foremost thinker and philosopher. He grabbed national headlines in the 1950s with his dissertation on the characters of Hang Tuah (Perwatakan Hang Tuah), the Malay literary classic. In it he challenged the traditional interpretation and made the hitherto hero Hang Tuah as nothing more than a palace hack, and elevated the anti-hero Hang Jebat as the true hero, willing to kill even the sultan in defence of honor and principles.
Kassim was jailed for nearly five years under the ISA for daring to express openly his political views, an experience which he recounted in his book, Universiti Kedua (Second University).
Kassim again shook the Malay world with his "Hadith: A Re-Examination" in which he challenges the infallibility of the purported words of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w.
Except for an honorary doctorate in Letters conferred by the National University of Malaysia, the country has not seen fit to honor this great public intellectual.
June 2005